


At Least Things Can't Get Any Worse!

by Relvetica



Series: An Old Handful of Small Xenosaga Fics I am Rescuing from LJ [3]
Category: Xenosaga
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3686043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Relvetica/pseuds/Relvetica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a wet footstep somewhere behind him, and despite his breathlessness chaos whirled around. About fifty meters down the street was a small blond child, dressed in grey and soaked through by the rain. They stared at each other, chaos in confusion and the boy in what looked like distress. "Hey," chaos called. "Are you--"</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Least Things Can't Get Any Worse!

chaos's fireman's carry on Canaan was starting to slip by the time he made it back to where they'd left Asher; he put him down with a grunt, leaning him back against the E.S's leg, and he stood with his hands on his knees and panted. Canaan, for his part, stared past chaos's hip like a child's doll. Facing a deactivated android was easy enough -- they looked pretty blank at their most animated -- but Realians were different. Even this one, supposedly repressed emotions and all, had a marked and very distinct personality, and seeing him like this was deeply unnerving. He was still breathing and his pulse felt even, but he wasn't responding to external stimuli or verbal command shortcuts.

"Canaan," chaos said, _"Please."_ Canaan's systems didn't seem to take pleading into special account.

There was a wet footstep somewhere behind him, and despite his breathlessness chaos whirled around. About fifty meters down the street was a small blond child, dressed in grey and soaked through by the rain. They stared at each other, chaos in confusion and the boy in what looked like distress. "Hey," chaos called. "Are you--"

The child slid an assault rifle down its strap from his shoulder and opened fire, and chaos grabbed Canaan by the shoulder and dove around to Asher's other side. He groped blindly for the external hatch lock; he wasn't even sure there was an external hatch lock, but his hand found something and the main cockpit opened. chaos heaved Canaan inside and clambered in after him, shutting the hatch against what was clearly now aimless gunfire.

Canaan was lolling in the pilot's seat and chaos was half sprawled across him, eying the panel. He'd only had time to run the simulation training on the nav seat on his flight over, but if this set-up was anything like Vector's A.M.W.S. cockpits, then... chaos reached down underneath the panel and found a trio of universal connector cables on spools. He pulled up on one and plugged the adapter into the port on the side of Canaan's neck, and then rapped on the E.S.'s control panel to get an access window to what was now the external drive.

If he did this wrong, they were going to be in very deep trouble. He swallowed and typed in a command to force a restart on Canaan's central nervous system.

Canaan stopped breathing. chaos held his breath as well, unthinkingly, until Canaan gasped deeply twenty seconds later, eyes wide. "Start-up sequence initialized," he said, "OS Version 7.99.8.9 Enhanced Memory Edition, Vector Industries Patent Number-- _why are you cold booting me?"_

"I didn't know what else to do!" chaos said. "You passed out!"

"You could have killed me." He reached across chaos to close his access window. "Why do you even know how to do this? Get off of me!" chaos had to climb over him to get back into the nav seat. Canaan grunted. "My self-diagnostic indicates a datalink severance. What happened?"

"I don't--" More gunfire, much closer, scattered itself loudly across Asher's hull, and chaos covered his head instinctively. None of it so much as left a dent, but Canaan managed to look alarmed as he pulled up a display from an external camera.

There was a group of them standing in the middle of the street now, all soaking wet, like a pack of purebred dogs left on their own to go feral. They stared up at Asher with unmistakable but inexplicable hostility. "Are those the URTVs?" Canaan asked.

"Yeah," chaos said. "Well... some of them."

"We're aborting the mission."

chaos gaped, and for an uncharitable moment he regretted reviving Canaan at all. "We can't just leave them here!"

Canaan jabbed at Asher's console, bringing it and nav displays back to life. "Whatever is going on here isn't isolated to those Realian series. If the URTVs are infected, then you're at risk, too. To say nothing of me."

"But I'm not affected!" chaos looked down at the children in the street; he knew arguing for them would be futile. "And you've recovered. It's not universal, whatever it is. Some of them might be all right somewhere."

"Might be?" Canaan asked. His tone was lightly acidic, but his hands were only hovering over the controls. "You're willing to bet your life on 'might be?'"

"Yes," chaos said.

Canaan tilted his head. He winced and pulled the adapter out of his neck. "All right," he said. "Stealth obviously isn't an issue anymore. We'll do one sweep of the perimeter of the complex with the floodlights. If we don't find anyone, we're leaving." He looked up at chaos over his shoulder. "That's all I'm giving you."

"Okay." chaos sighed. "Thank you."

Canaan engaged Asher's thrusters. "And the next time you decide to see how good you are at neural hacking, do me a favor and change your idiot mind."


End file.
